


Obvious

by patternofdefiance



Category: Sherlock (TV), Sherlock Holmes & Related Fandoms
Genre: F/F, Femslash, Femslash February, Femslash February Drabble Challenge, Genderbending, Genderswap, Red Pants, genderbent John (Joan), genderbent Sherlock
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2013-02-20
Updated: 2013-02-19
Packaged: 2017-11-29 21:53:52
Rating: Explicit
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings, No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 3
Words: 5,395
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/691890
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/patternofdefiance/pseuds/patternofdefiance
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>“Look, Sher, I’m flattered, really, but I’ve been late for rotation three days this month already. Where. Are. My. Trousers.”</p><p>“Joan, please refrain from shortening my name – especially to that. You know how I feel about contractions of proper nou ¬–” Sherlock looked up from the series of cross sections she was cutting from the rat liver she had procured. She opened her mouth. Closed it. Opened it again. Stared.</p>
            </blockquote>





	1. Chapter 1

**Author's Note:**

> Red Pants Homage + Fem!slash February Fill  
> (An Attempt)
> 
> Explicit slash in Chapter 3 only.

“Look, Sher, I’m flattered, really, but I’ve been late for rotation three days this month already. Where. Are. My. Trousers.”

“Joan, please refrain from shortening my name – especially to  _that_. You know how I feel about contractions of proper nou ­–” Sherlock looks up from the series of cross sections she is cutting from the rat liver she had procured. She opens her mouth. Closes it. Opens it again. Stares.

Joan, with her oatmeal colour-and-texture jumper, with her short blond hair tucked and pinned away in that silly, prim manner that says quite clearly,  _‘without regulations to guide me, I have no clue what to do with my hair,_ ’ with her fresh face, recently washed, flushed from scrubbing actually –

Well, Joan is standing there, in the kitchen, in that awful jumper and not much else. Except for red pants.

Not  _panties_ , either, Sherlock notices, closing her mouth and quirking an eyebrow. Actual pants. Men’s pants. In red. She clears her throat. “Something you wanted, Doctor?”

By this point, Joan is tight-lipped, irate annoyance hardening the lines of her shoulders even through the lumpy shell of wool. Her exposed legs, while shapely – muscled still from desert days – are stock straight, rigid.

Joan is also, upon further inspection, holding her gun.

“Come off it Sherlock, you know what this is about.”

When Sherlock just continues to stare, Joan sighs, finally dropping the tension from her limbs.

“All my trousers are gone, Sherlock. And my gun – which I had hidden from you for very obvious reasons – was lying on my bed. On my pillow, to be exact. What is this all about?”

“Oh!” Sherlock flaps a hand. “ _That._ ” She turns back to her liver slicing. “That was an attempt to see if the stretch pattern caused by shoving a gun into the back of trousers was discernible, predictable, and repeatable.”

“Oh.” Joan considers this for a moment. “And?”

“And what, Joan? I am  _busy_.”

“Was there? Was it? Discernible? Predictable, all that?”

“Inconclusive.” Sherlock is already slipping away.

Joan moves into the kitchen, gun still in hand, and leans over Sherlock’s shoulder, staring at the rat liver covering their one and only kitchen table. She places the hand holding the gun down on the table, right by Sherlock’s, with a  _thunk_. “Trousers,  _Sher_. Where.” Her other hand rests lightly on Sherlock’s shoulder.

Sherlock sniffs at the improper monosyllabification of her name. “My room.”

“Ta very much.” A quick squeeze to the shoulder.

With that, Joan is gone from the room, stomping into Sherlock’s bedroom, a susurrus of muttering accompanying her.

Sherlock stares at the liver slices for a long minute without seeing them, without even noting the pinking of the edges she has been looking for all morning. Instead she sees strong legs and the pinking of cheeks in her mind’s eye, and try as she might, can’t really be bothered to delete any of it.

Even though Joan had called her ’Sher’.

Probably the red pants had something to do with it.


	2. Chapter 2

When Joan comes home nine hours later smelling like a morgue, Sherlock knows better than to ask how the rotation was.

That’s the problem, though – Sherlock  _always_ knows better than to ask. So she never asks, and Joan never has to lie or gloss over the horror of putting car crash victims, gang rape survivors, or failed suicides back together. She never has to say ‘Fine,’ or ‘Long day,’ never has to diminish her own successes or failures.

Sherlock knows this is seen as rude, disinterested, indifferent behavior. It makes for a coldness in their cohabitation – but the reward is watching Joan’s stiff shoulders release as the awaited query never arrives. It’s watching her shrug off the absence of the question, the frivolous response, and continue on with her day.

It’s cold, but there’s comfort in it.

 

*

Joan comes home to 221B and Sherlock and breathes out the hospital in a long sigh as she climbs the stairs. She scrubbed at the hospital, but the memory of the homeless man’s blood and vomit and panic lingers. The smell of hospital disinfectant is, at this point, just another reminder of gore.

Sherlock is her trademarked version of silent, hardly noticing Joan’s entry into the room. Joan relaxes a touch – after a day on the ER floor, she didn’t think she could handle Sherlock noticing her, dissecting her with those mercurial eyes.

She fetches what she needs from her room, then heads to the shower. She’s about to start undressing when she comes to a very English decision:

Tea first.

*

Sherlock glances up at Joan as she goes to the kitchen, rattles cup and kettle, turns taps on and off. Typical displacement behavior. Her eyes once more fixed on her laptop screen, charting the oxygen saturation data from the liver slices, she smiles to herself when she hears the expected second ceramic  _clink_.

Two cups it is, then.

“It was accidental death,” Sherlock says, shutting the laptop with a snap. She stands, stretching, and moves to the window, back to Joan.

A click in the kitchen, and then Joan is pouring two cups of hot, black succor.

“Well,” Sherlock smirks, “I  _say_  accidental. Bradshaw was taking the  _homo sapiens_  dietary stipulation of ‘omnivore’ a little too literally. Member of ‘ _Epi-Cure-All_.’ Thank you,” she accepts the cup of tea Joan passes her, suddenly close, then far away again as the doctor settles against the kitchen counter to drink her own.

Sherlock takes a sip. “So there was, in fact, nothing accidental about the ingestion of the rat meat. The ‘accident’ portion of today’s entertainment comes in not checking with the gardener if he had been laying down poison for the beasties.”

Joan pauses, mouth full of hot tea, then swallows. “So the housekeeper didn’t do it?”

“Oh no, he did cook and feed his master the poisoned rat meat. And the gardener was definitely responsible for the poison being in the rats. But neither of them is guilty.” Sherlock smiled widely, a pleased predator smile. “Anderson will be furious.”

“You  _did_  insult his abilities to within an inch of their existence.”

Sherlock snorts. “Even when he does his job accurately he still misses the most important details.”

“How very fortunate for everyone then, that you are there to point it all out.” Joan drains her last, then puts down the cup on the counter. “I need a shower.” She grimaces, her free hand smearing through the grease on her face.

“Obviously.”

Joan is halfway to the shower, when Sherlock pivots to stare at her retreating form. “How was it, today?” she asks softly.

Joan freezes. “You never ask me about my day.”

“Quite so. Nevertheless. Something was different today.” Sherlock stands still, arms at her side, her half-drunk tea perched on the mantel.

Joan considers for a moment. “What was different about my behavior today? What gave it away?”

“I’d rather not say.”

“Sherlock.”

Sherlock grimaces this time. “Normally you are more… _pleased_  by my deductions. Especially when they serve to lift blame or expose the idiocy of the victim, which this case holds in spades. What happened at the hospital.”

“I don’t want to talk about it.”

“Joan.”

The way Sherlock says her name – Joan closes her eyes, briefly. “There was a homeless man,” she says finally. “Quite beside himself, bleeding out. He’d fallen onto train tracks. He was dying, but he kept saying something over and over, and it was mad gibberish to the rest of us, but he was so intent on imparting it to us, like it could save us, and we were just too stupid to understand, too wrapped up in trying to save him to pay attention –” Joan gasps in a breath, pauses, regains her clarity. She lifts her eyes from the middle space they’d found during her monotone delivery, and her eyes alight upon Sherlock’s.

Sherlock is silent in the aftermath of that sentence, her brain spinning as a realization slowly claims her. God, is this how normal people happen upon answers? Is this how slowly the truth unfolds for them?

“Did he make it?” Sherlock asks, and if her voice is a touch abrasive, let it be from the tea and not from that realization.

Joan shakes her head. “No.”

Joan leaves for the shower, stranding Sherlock alone in the middle of 221B, in the middle of a blast radius that encompasses her entire life so far. She feels unprepared. She never saw this coming.

But then, who could predict Joan Hannah Watson?

* 

When Joan emerges from the shower, skin warm and dewy and smelling like home and not like her desert nightmares, the flat is empty. No Sherlock, no thrumming violin, no bubbling concoctions in the kitchen.

Perhaps it had been too much to say, too soon.

What was the use of hiding it, though? How long would that have lasted living with the world’s nosiest, most observant, most  _brilliant_ flatmate?

Better this way, on Joan’s terms. Cleaner this way.

Joan pushes open her bedroom door, has dropped her hospital rags in the hamper, and is halfway to the bed before her eyes have adjusted to the sudden dark enough to see her bed is not empty. Instead of containing nothing except one sheet set, one duvet, and two pillows, an additional lump is present.

It contains exactly one Sherlock.

Joan can see the silver quickness of Sherlock’s eyes in the dusk-like darkness of the room. Awake then.

She means to ask what Sherlock is on about. She means to laugh, maybe make a joke out of this – whatever this is.

Instead she walks over to the bed.

She intends to hoist Sherlock from the mattress, to give voice to the anger inside, the anger she holds – no  _squeezes_ – like a grenade without its pin.

Instead, she sits down on the edge of her bed, feeling like an intruder.

Just when she’s decided she’s had enough, that she’s going to leave, maybe spend the night at Jake’s, maybe just go and have a quiet pint somewhere, a pale arm snakes around her middle. Soft pressure guides her to lie down lengthwise in front of Sherlock’s longer, slimmer form.

After the first millisecond of hesitation, she obeys the gentle insistence of that arm and scoots back to press against Sherlock’s front.

Joan doesn’t know what to do with her hands. After a longer-than-necessary moment, she lets her hand rise to tangle fingers with Sherlock’s. In response, Sherlock’s entire body tightens around her, embracing her, warming her despite her cold hands and cold feet.

Sherlock’s cold nose is right behind her jaw, pressing against the damp warmth of her pulse.

“What are we doing?” Joan asks finally. She whispers, even though there’s no reason for it.

Sherlock sighs. “I don’t know.”


	3. Chapter 3

Joan wakes hours later and hours too early. It must be three or four, but she cannot be arsed to crane her neck for a view of the alarm clock by her bedside.

God, it’s been a long time since she woke up at this time of night without the aid of a nightmare. The warmth at her back, the steady breathing of someone alive and uninjured – Sherlock, she realizes.

She’s in bed with Sherlock, who still has an arm flung around her torso, just beneath her breasts. Joan, on her back mostly, can just make out the tangle of Sherlock’s dark mop of curls – apparently the detective sleeps with an intent to self-asphyxiate; she sleeps on her belly, face pushed into the pillows and Joan’s neck.

It’s all so unexpected and so intimate, Joan doesn’t know whether to laugh or shiver. The shiver sort of wins, making her skin lift into little bumps. Joan swallows hard as she feels her nipples tighten. She shifts a little, not sure of her body’s response. While she has always appreciated the female form, preferring the curves and swells over, actually, the hard planes that men sported, she’s never had such a…response.

Then again, Sherlock is hardly the curvy sort – tall, lithe, and a little too thin, with hipbones jutting out, collar bones standing proud, and smaller breasts-

Joan shifts again, this time very aware and less confused of her body’s reaction.  _Bugger_.

A cuddle with Sherlock is one thing – they both had a bit of a  _moment_ earlier – but this state of arousal is inconvenient at best. For one thing, she’s not sure Sherlock is even capable or willing to reciprocate.

For another, since when does Joan Watson randy up due to the proximity of a girl?

Back in Afghanistan, there had been only men – and while none of them had mattered in a long term sense, she’d thoroughly enjoyed herself, earning a bit of a reputation. Nothing nasty, just a nickname that some said with intrigue and others with judgement.

It had never occurred to Joan that she might feel this way about a girl. A woman, really. Sherlock specifically.

Next to her, Sherlock shifts and sighs.

Joan twists her neck to stare – this is all moot, anyway, since her proclivities are not necessarily shared –

Sherlock is lying more on her side now, face soft from sleep, eyes batting open slowly, languorously.

“I –”

“You’re aroused.”

Well, there goes  _that_.

Sherlock arches an eyebrow, going from zero to full focus in one smooth blink. Joan has known soldiers less quick on the wake-up.

“Yeah….Um. Sorry about that.” Joan is flushing by now, a tinge on her neck and cheeks. God, since when does she  _blush_?

Sherlock twists to lie on her back, blinks up at the ceiling, then hoists herself up and over Joan, planting her forearms on either side of the surprised face below her.

“Why apologize?” Sherlock asks as Joan shifts uncomfortably, trying to keep her nipples from brushing against Sherlock’s rib cage.

“Because you have always given every indication of being less than remotely interested in any sort of… in any of  _that_ ,” she finishes lamely. “And,” she adds, perhaps a touch sullen, “you’re married  _‘to your work._ ’”

Sherlock smiles after a moment, one of those ‘ _oh Joan, you’re trying aren’t you?’_  smiles. “Tell me Joan, what do you observe?”

Joan huffs out a sigh. “You. Over me.”

“Yes, I  _was_  hoping you would be more detailed in your assessment.”

Joan rolls her eyes. “Fine. You are, for once, not wearing that baggy t-shirt you’ve had since Uni, the one you always sleep in. Your pajama bottoms are the ones that actually fit you. Your hair is a mess, but clean.” Joan blinks.

“And?” Sherlock prompts softly.

Joan has a sudden need for more oxygen. “But you were never –”

“What do you see, as a student of the human body?” Sherlock leans a little closer. “As a doctor?”

Joan’s eyes snap to Sherlock’s, then roam her face. “Expanded surface capillaries, greater intake of oxygen, dilated pupils.” Joan looks away for a moment. “Is this what it’s always like for you? So intense? So  _obvious_?”

Sherlock chuckles, her eyes scanning Joan’s face and neckline. “Yes. Although apparently I’m not  _that_  obvious, if it took you this long.”

“I wasn’t looking for this.”

Sherlock pulls back a little, no longer crowding Joan. She stares at Joan for long enough to make Joan refresh her blush and squirm. Her eyes narrow. “You’ve wanted this for a long time now…” She brings a hand to the side of Joan’s face, hesitates, then traces it down her cheek, jaw, and neck. Joan shivers. “You didn’t know?”

Joan shakes her head.

Sherlock lets her hand come to a rest on Joan’s ribcage, thumb stroking the rib right beneath Joan’s left breast. “What do you want me to do?”

Joan realizes her hands are fisted in the sheets. She takes a breath and lets go, lifts both hands and – after a moment’s awkwardness – places then on Sherlock’s back. “…slow down?” Joan closes her eyes. “I’m not ruling whatever this is out – I – can…just give me a moment to catch up, yes?”

Sherlock nods, but otherwise doesn’t move, eyes fixed on Joan’s.

After several deep breaths, Joan moves her fingers lightly over Sherlock’s back, feeling her ribs and spine easily through the skin. Too easily. Letting her hands roam, she takes medical note of the elasticity of Sherlock’s skin, the dearth of body fat, the leanness of the underlying muscle.

“Sherlock –?” Joan isn’t sure what she wants to say, or ask for, but she feels like there should be a next step, and someone should take it. And for all her experience with men who didn’t matter, she has absolutely no clue what to do with Sherlock, who does. Who does, somehow, suddenly, matter very much indeed.

Ever the observant one, Sherlock leans in slowly, giving Joan plenty of time to adjust. However, instead of going for the lips, or even the face, Sherlock lowers her slightly parted lips to Joan’s collar bone.

 It is the most tender act Joan has ever experienced. Her throat works, and she shifts, aware suddenly of how close Sherlock’s skin is to hers, of Sherlock’s breath huffing across newly sensitized goose bumps, of her own heart thudding and jarring in her rib cage.

Sherlock places a series of tiny, chaste kisses along Joan’s throat, following the jugular. She kisses, then presses, then  _nips_  at the juncture of jaw and earlobe. Already breathing heavily at this point, Joan gasps, and arches a little.

At the sudden contact, Sherlock moans.

Joan stills. That sound, issued forth from Sherlock’s mouth, plunges straight into Joan, flicking switches as it goes. Without any real decision on her part, Joan tightens her arms around Sherlock, scoots her up and pulls her down, and –

This kiss is not so chaste. Joan closes her eyes and lets her lips and her hands and her body seek and enjoy what they may. Sherlock, startled by the sudden change in tactics, catches up quickly, and takes over again, opening her mouth and insinuating her tongue inside Joan’s mouth.

The first touch of their tongues, the mingle of breaths, the accidental click of teeth –

Joan pulls away gasping, and the room is much brighter than it has any cause to be.  _Dilated pupils, indeed._

“You’ve never kissed anyone before.”

Sherlock sits up, effectively straddling Joan. She grins. “No.” She rocks her hips a little. “But I was correct in my hypothesis that it cannot be  _that_  involved if teenagers manage it.”

Joan’s hands are on Sherlock’s thighs, rubbing little circles, and when did that happen? Instead of worrying about it, Joan flips a very surprised Sherlock over and under.

Sherlock is panting, eyes blown wide, colour high on her cheekbones, like a fever, like a  _high._ “Doctor, do I detect a diminishing of your docility?” She arches up against Joan, eliciting a moan. “A recession of reticence?”

“Git,” Joan manages before reclaiming Sherlock’s mouth. This time, she doesn’t let the pushy woman take the lead. This time, she does her reputation proud, lipping, tonguing, sucking, biting, scraping – she pulls away when she can feel Sherlock’s heart beat pounding against her own. “Teenagers don’t manage  _that_ ,” she counters huskily.

Sherlock breathes harshly, and there’s something dark and flushed and _ready_  about her, and Joan finds she cannot be bothered less with what it says about her that she is just as ready – and more than willing. Much more than eager.

She slips her hand under the white ribbed tank top Sherlock is sporting – it clings to her angularity. She pushes the shirt up, watching Sherlock writhe, biting her lip against the little sounds of her breathing. Those hands, normally so cohesive, in control, concerted in their motion, are staggering through the air as if drunk, first bumping against Joan’s shoulders, then her sides, then the hemline of her own shirt.

Joan drags her nails against Sherlock’s skin as she lifts the fabric, and Sherlock’s fingers spasm against her belly.

“Joan –” Sherlock is arching up off the bed –

With a practiced ease, Joan flips the tank top up and over, not removing it entirely, so that it traps Sherlock’s arms and blocks her vision, leaving her mouth open for a kiss.

Joan swoops in, takes the kiss, gives the kiss, enjoys the kiss, the taste, the sound, the breath of  _Sherlock._  This is so much easier and so much better than she imagined. This is effortless, and brilliant, because she can tell she’s  _dazzling_  Sherlock, in a way she never thought she could or would.

“I – I – ah” Sherlock bucks up at the feather touch of Joan’s left hand against her hipbone, her right hand keeping Sherlock tangled and pinned in her undershirt. Sherlock’s flat, pale stomach twitches and jerks; her legs thrash, feet planting against the mattress, then kicking out against the sheets. Sherlock growls in frustration, but there is need in that sound.

Joan lifts away, and for the first time notices Sherlock’s breasts. They are small, pert, and the nipples are tight. She can tell that the areolae, when not tight, will be small, even, and dark – not pink.

Eyes on Sherlock, who has calmed down now and is watching Joan unblinkingly, Joan lowers her lips to the skin between Sherlock’s breasts. She kisses, then nips, then tongues that patch, letting her free hand just barely brush the side of the left breast. Sherlock is shivering, but seems to be holding her breath.

Joan, lifts her open mouth, pauses above the right nipple, eyes flicking between Sherlock and the little peak below her. She exhales warmth onto the nipple, then closes her eyes and takes it into her mouth.

It’s as if she passed an electrical current through Sherlock’s body, a flash of _tight_ , a hard judder of limbs. Sherlock bites off a choking, keening noise before it can become completely ridiculous.

For Joan’s part, she cannot reconcile the weirdness that is having Sherlock’s nipple in her mouth with the heightening state of her own arousal. Soon, she stops trying to think it through, instead living through her lips and fingertips, breathing the heady musk of Sherlock’s increasingly sweat-sheened skin, listening to the little chirps and gasps coming from that clever mouth.

Joan blushes as she catches up with what could come next. She lifts her lips from Sherlock’s nipple, surprised to find she’s cupping the other breast entirely in one hand. She releases her hold on Sherlock’s shirt and helps her out of it. “Sherlock,” she begins, but stops.

What Joan sees shoots a dark bolt of heat straight into her abdomen, making her clench; Sherlock, dark curls plastered to her forehead. Sherlock, sweat dewing on her skin. Sherlock, insanely curved lips flushed red and swollen, parted, panting. Sherlock, eyes blown dark, all pupil, unseeing almost. God, her pulse is hammering in her throat, visible even in the dark.

No hesitation now, Joan leans in again and slips her mouth over Sherlock’s, her tongue past unresisting lips, and slides a hand from breast down along obliques and abdominals, over the sharp jut of bone, into the softer crease between thigh and pubic bone. Sherlock shivers.

Joan pauses. “Alright?”

Sherlock’s throat works violently, and she nods. Joan can see a confusion in her eyes, a vulnerability. She leaves her hand where it is, giving Sherlock a moment to adjust, whispers, “It’s ok.”

Sherlock sighs, breathes deeply twice. Swallows. “Joan.”

“Yes?”

“I’ve never…”

“I know.”

“You’re not… that is…you haven’t…”

“Please finish a sentence, Sherlock.” Joan kisses her cheek. “If only so I can tell you how wrong you are.”

Sherlock takes a deep breath. “While having given every indication of being attracted to me mentally and emotionally, you’ve never even once glanced at my body – or the body of any other woman, for that matter. This may be too much for you.” Sherlock blinks. “I wouldn’t want to ask for too much from you.”

“Liar.” Joan kisses her deeply. “Also:  _wrong_.” She breathes in Sherlock and exhales Sherlock. “You are beautiful. Anyone can see – even me.” She gives Sherlock a full-body squeeze, legs and arms tightening. “Touching you is… a revelation. I never expected…” Joan shakes her head. “I didn’t know I wanted this, but I do now.”

“Because I pointed it out? Because I told you?” Sherlock clenches her fists. “I’m good at making people want what I want, if I want.”

“Eloquent, Sherlock. Wrong again, though.”

Sherlock closes her eyes. “I make you do things against your better judgement all the time.”

“You don’t make me do anything, you git. Of all times to have a crisis of conscience over having me fetch your mobile, your tea,or  your dinner!” Joan laughs. “You’re not twisting my arm here, Sherlock. I’m not touching you to avoid dealing with a strop or a sulk or a tantrum.”

Sherlock stiffens. “I do not throw  _tantrums_!”

Joan lifts both eyebrows and looks sternly down at Sherlock, who doesn’t have the grace to look sheepish. “Point is,” Joan says firmly, “this isn’t fetching your laundry. And I’ll thank you not to question my emerging sexual preferences.”

Sherlock peruses Joan’s face, and finally nods. “Alright.”

“You’re sure  _you_  want this?” Joan asks, unsure now of Sherlock’s desires. Maybe she was projecting her own uncertainties?

Sherlock’s hand pulls Joan in for a kiss, while the other slides down to garb her hip. One breath-stealing kiss later, they’re back on track. “Yes.”

Joan moans against her. “Your kissing technique has improved.” Sherlock smirks, then gasps as Joan finally moves her fingers from their resting place to card them through the springy hair between Sherlock’s legs. She inches her fingers down, and if there was any doubt about Sherlock’s desires before, the slickness coating her labia dispels it.

One moment to wrap her brain around this newness, to think past ‘ _I am touching a woman,_ ’ and on to ‘ _I am touching Sherlock,_ ’ and then Joan is sliding her fingers along the folds, noting the clitoris, coating her fingers with Sherlock’s wetness.

For her part, Sherlock is actually, honestly  _whimpering_. It makes Joan’s breath catch in her throat.

“Alright?”

“Yes yes y–” Joan slides her middle finger in up to the second knuckle. She meets resistance, a tightness, and the vaginal walls contract momentarily. Sherlock holds her breath, and Joan pauses, thinking back to her first experiences. Sherlock relaxes slowly. “My research never indicated …this?” Sherlock manages.

Joan thinks for a moment. “Your hymen is mostly intact. Most girls are active enough in their lifestyles or their…exploration to…umm work out the kinks themselves.” Joan stays still, her finger inside Sherlock, the other hand clasping her waist. “Sherlock, have you never touched yourself?”

Sherlock scoffs, shifting her hips a little. “I  _have_  masturbated, if that’s what you’re asking. Externally, to completion, if you must know. I am capable. I am ready. I am willing. Get on with it.”

Looking up at the grim determination on Sherlock’s face, Joan’s heart crumbles a little. “What did you think about?” she asks softly, barely twitching her fingers.

To Joan’s great surprise, Sherlock blushes.  _Blushes._  Blushes pink, chest to cheeks. In an effort to conceal it she turns away, but Joan crowds up and kisses her, and waits.

“You,” Sherlock finally mutters.

Joan stills, but just for a moment, and then she’s kissing Sherlock’s mouth and neck and shoulders and breasts and –

And her left hand is pushing deeper steadily, until she’s sheathed her finger inside Sherlock. Instead of moving that digit, however, she slides her thumb until it circles Sherlock’s prominent clitoris slowly.

“Oh!” Sherlock’s thighs clamp around her wrist in shock, and Joan uses her other hand to coax her knees apart again so she can keep moving. Joan plants kisses on her ribs on her hipbones on her stomach on her belly button.

She strokes all the pale skin she can reach, then slides a hand down and around to grip buttocks and thigh, where those two meet, and  _squeezes_ , all the while making circles with her thumb, speeding up just a little –

Sherlock is panting rhythmically now, seems distressed and breathless, is babbling about something, is unintelligible, is barely managing to gasp, “ _Joan –_ ”

Then stills as her body tightens, as her back arches, and Joan can feel the clench begin inside, can feel the overpowering wave begin far away and rush forward to break over Sherlock, who gasps and shakes and falls apart so intensely that she forgets to breath.

After a long moment of feeling little twitches play across and through and inside Sherlock, Joan slides her finger loose. She sniffs her finger, curious, then looks up to see Sherlock watching her, her eyes dark yet sated. Her breath is heaving in her chest, and Joan slowly lifts her wet fingers to her mouth and licks the tip.

It doesn’t taste all that different from what she recalls of herself – perhaps a little saltier? Sherlock could probably stand to drink more water, and Joan will tell her as soon as she stops being this turned on.

Still dazed, Sherlock pulls Joan forward and kisses her, grabbing her wet hand in her own and twining their fingers against the sheets. Trust Sherlock not to care about making a slippery mess. Sherlock drags their joined hands down, then breaks free and snakes her hand between Joan’s legs, inside her pajama bottoms.

Joan bites her lip, suddenly aware of how wet she is, uncomfortably almost.

For her part, Sherlock places her palm against Joan’s pubic bone and pushes up, a soft pressure, a connection. She swallows, eyes large in her pale face, as she watches Joan’s eyes dart back and forth. Like Joan, she slides in one finger and pauses.

“Two,” Joan whispers, sitting up to straddle Sherlock, closing her eyes and tilting her head back.

“Take your shirt off.”

Joan complies, but slowly, eyes fixed on Sherlock. She’s wearing a jogging bra underneath, and Sherlock nods at it. It falls to join her bed shirt on the floor.

Her breasts are larger than Sherlock’s, fuller, rounder. They were absolute murder in the desert, hot and sweaty and  _in the way_. Here, now, under the heat of Sherlock’s regard, they seem precious.  _Joan_  feels precious.

Sherlock sits up, hand still between Joan’s thighs, and brings her left hand up to cup one breast, and then thumb the nipple. Joan’s breath hitches. Sherlock grins, and leans in to take one nipple in her mouth, sliding a second finger into Joan at the same time –

Her hips buck of their own volition, and Joan lets the moan in her throat pour out of her lungs and mouth like honey, sticky and slow. Everything is glowing, just enough. “Yes, Sherlock,” she murmurs, wrapping her arms around the woman’s slim shoulders, burying her fingers in black curls, sucking a kiss into the pale skin of Sherlock’s neck.

Sherlock’s fingers are pumping in and out slowly now, and her other hand drifts down to join in, and two fingers find and caress Joan’s clitoris, never exerting direct pressure, always slicking around the edges and it’s _maddening_  and Joan is suddenly reminded of Sherlock picking the padlock on the evidence locker in Allsbury Station, how she’d focused and frowned, two hands, all fingers, busy, skilled, certain, intent –

“Sherlock, I –”

Heat and electricity build in a flash, swamping her senses, enhancing them, so that she is deaf but hears her own heart thundering, so that she is blind, but sees bright spots in the dark, so that she is numb and dumb, but feeling Sherlock, still  _tasting_  Sherlock –

She slips back down into the present eventually. She’s on her side, breathing hard and deep. Sherlock is running a mostly clean hand through her blond tresses, busy with her other hand, tasting her still-wet fingers.

“Alright?” Sherlock asks, and Joan smiles and nods, reaching up to join their hands.

“You?”

Sherlock’s reply is to look like the cat that got the milk.

“Don’t look so smug,” Joan chides, but everything about her is smiling. “We are going to be  _exhausted_  tomorrow.”

Sherlock snorts. “Speak for yourself.” She scoots down and settles in, as if to sleep. She grins suddenly.

Joan groans, because the grin is not good news. “What?”

“Who do you think is going to be more upset with me for snatching you up? Anderson, Lestrade, or,” and Sherlock bats her eyelashes, “or  _Mycroft_?”

The resulting shriek echoes along Baker Street for some time.


End file.
